Ok, I'll tell you what; I'm going to do something that really is against my better judgment, and I'm going to comply with this request. You're going to have to indulge me a little bit because I've had a long, grueling week and frankly I'm not sure I'm up to doing all the typing fully complying with this would require. Also, forgive me for putting some words in your mouth here but I think that is necessary to prove that I am in fact smart enough to follow your wisdom.

Also, regarding your comment on leaving, I misunderstood. At first I thought you mean you were not going to continue the debate, but a secondary comment made me think you meant you were leaving the forum. Walking away from an argument you no longer feel like having is one thing. I thought you were saying you were walking away altogether, which I thought was silly.

Anyway, you had, at a high level, 2 points in this thread.

1. You are dismayed at the need of human being to celebrate the death of a fellow human being, especially a human being who was no longer threatening and was more a symbol of repression as opposed to be being a repressive element himself, at least at the point that he died. Whether or not Gaddafi was every bit the tyrant that he was portrayed as being, the fact remains that he had not wielded any real power for several months and at the time of his capture he was simply a helpless man who was deserving of the mercy and justice that he is accused of having never shown, and that we should not be celebrating the enactment of "an eye for an eye" but lamenting the killing of a helpless prisoner.

2. You disagree with the automatic assumption that Gaddifi was the tyrant that he was made out to be. You feel the only evidence that supports this comes from government who have their own agendas and reasons to portray him this way (i.e. oil) and from the media who also have their own agenda. The media agenda can vary and you never really get into what it may be but, suffice to say, they do not always have incentives to report honestly or even accurately. And, they can also be duped. So, how do we know he's the bad guy? How do we know he bombed Flight 109? How do we really knokw he bombed the German nightclub in 1986? We know these things happened, but how do we know he's responsible? And, regarding his conflict with his own people the Arab world as it exists today is mostly made up of countries that were carved up by the Allies after WWI that suited the needs of Europeans and did not account for long standing tribes, tribal fueds, etc. so there are some very old grudges. Given that, how can we be sure that Gaddafi was the bad guy and the rebels were the good guys? Because the US and Europe, who helped create the middle eastern mess over a period over ~90 years tells us it is? How are they trustworthy? They side with whomever fits their immediate needs, right? That's how the US ended up supportin Saddam Hussein in the 80s, because he was at war with the sworn US enemy of Iran. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until he's no longer convenient. So, how do we know what is the truth? Howe can we trust what we've been told well enough to celebrate this?

Does that about sum it up for you? I'm not going to go into counter points until you've at least confirmed that much. Also, I'm beat and don't feel like typing any more right now.

Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross
When ignorance reigns, life is lost

(21-10-2011 08:36 PM)BnW Wrote: Does that about sum it up for you? I'm not going to go into counter points until you've at least confirmed that much.

Not bad, BnW, looks like you actually got some of my points after all.

Allow me to rephrase them in my own words:

OK, Here are my main points:

1. I was disgusted by the reaction of people totally unrelated to anything that happened in Libya or any of the bombings and terrorist acts attributed to Gadaffi. These were not the victims of a tyrant but people enjoying the spectacle of revenge.

2. I was troubled by the automatic assumptions ignorant people make, without knowledge of history, culture, religion, psychology and sociology of the tribes making up the Libyan state and their very complicated relationships.

3. I question the automatic labeling of a human being as an “evil monster” without knowing what choices that person had -- choices which often are an assortment of vile and viler evils in the real world. (I have once heard an interview with Fidel Castro, in which he admitted that after the success of the revolution they decided on a dictatorship as the only means of preventing American interests corrupting and destroying their socialist aims). I have grown up under a communist dictatorship, under a government that walked a deadly tight-rope trying to balance whatever little freedom we had against the overwhelming pressure from the old Soviet Union. They had to do a lot of dirty things in order to save whatever they could. I did not wish to be in their shoes and certainly did not call them “evil monsters”. Leaders often have to make choices between two near equally unacceptable options, like Churchill letting the Germans bomb Coventry in order to protect the secret of Enigma. Without knowing the domestic and international pressures on Gaddafi, we can not judge his actions, no matter how harsh they appeared to us here in the west, thousands of miles away. We, here in the west, are far too quick to pass judgment on anyone, anywhere on the Globe, without the faintest idea of how we would have behaved, had we been born, shaped and grown up there, with that culture, that pressure-cooker, that cauldron of hate and suffering.

4. I am exasperated by the gullibility of western citizens when it comes to trusting their media and government, in view of the blatant and obvious lies they have been subjected to over and over again, year after year. Will they ever learn to connect the dots and see what is happening?

5. I can’t accept, without convincing proof, the automatic assumption that every tyrant, we in the west helped to create, was a horrible sadist, enjoying torturing their own people while getting filthy rich themselves. Many of them had idealistic notions of nationality, trying to stand up to the west, giving their people some pride (of course you have the other kind as well, but it is not an automatic assumption). Gaddafi in particular enraged the West by trying to keep Libyan oil under Libyan control. As did the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran, before the CIA engineered a coup and saddled them with the Shah.

6. Finally, I despair over the stupidity of an overwhelming majority of western citizens, who don't realize that they are living in a giant Potemkin village, or an international reality show, where they are thrown from one crisis to the next, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, like clockwork, getting emotionally involved in each of them, completely forgetting the previous one that they were so worked up about. It is a kind of drug-addiction of a roller-coaster ride, staggering from war to war, from crisis to crisis, from “public enemy #1” to “public enemy #1” of the month. They don't realize that many of these crisis are deliberately engineered (like tricking Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait) in order to channel the income of western citizens into the industrial-military complex and divert attention of the same citizens from their domestic problems.

These are the main points I tried to make in this thread, without going into a lot of detail about them because I, too, get tired with a lot of typing.
ETA:

Tomorrow I will be away whole day, on one of our book-buying trips for our small online book business, so I can't respond to anything till the evening.

No need to respond. You have listed a number of general concerns, provide some specific examples, and some of what you said, both general and specific, I agree with and some I don't. On the specifics of this one dictator, I'm satisfied that his own people, and probably the world, is better off without him. You can disagree with me and we can move on.

Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross
When ignorance reigns, life is lost

(22-10-2011 09:38 AM)BnW Wrote: No need to respond. You have listed a number of general concerns, provide some specific examples, and some of what you said, both general and specific, I agree with and some I don't. On the specifics of this one dictator, I'm satisfied that his own people, and probably the world, is better off without him. You can disagree with me and we can move on.

Electricity was FREE in Libya.
Newly married couples recieved $50.000 to buy a new home.
Education was completly FREE
Healthcare was FREE.
If you couldnt find the education you wanted nor the heathcare then the libyan goverment FUNDED you to go abroad to recieve them.
ALL loans were INTEREST FREE by law.
If you wanted to buy a brand new car then the Libyan goverment paid HALF towards it.
Fuel cost almost NOTHING.
Anybody who wanted to become a farmer was given free use of land, equipment and seeds.
The central bank of Libya was state owned and issued DEBT FREE money.

Oh and on the issue of the Lockerbie bombing did you know that the US goverment paid all witnesses $4 million to testify against the men accused and that most of them have now recanted there evidence???

I could go on and on and on and on............because I dont like to listen to what I am told by my goverment.....why??? Well maybe the fact that they promise to do things but never EVER deliver. The fact that the west start and create more wars than the east.

"I confirm today on July 18th 2007, that I stole the third hand-manufactured MST-13 Timer PC-Board consisting of 8 layers of fibre-glass from MEBO Ltd. and gave it without permission on June 22nd 1989 to a person officially investigating the Lockerbie case," Lumpert wrote. (The identity of the official is known.)

"It did not escape me that the MST-13 fragment shown [at the Lockerbie trial] on the police photograph No PT/35(b) came from the non-operational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen," Lumpert added.

"I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time, for the innocent Libyan Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi sentenced to life imprisonment, and for the country of Libya."

In just seven paragraphs, the Lumpert affidavit elucidates the longstanding mysteries surrounding the infamous MST-13 timer, which allegedly triggered the bomb that exploded Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on December 21st 1988.

YOUR GOVERMENTS DONT CARE ABOUT YOU, ME OR OUR CHILDREN.

I feel so much, and yet I feel nothing.
I am a rock, I am the sky, the birds and the trees and everything beyond.
I am the wind, in the fields in which I roar. I am the water, in which I drown.

(22-10-2011 09:38 AM)BnW Wrote: No need to respond. You have listed a number of general concerns, provide some specific examples, and some of what you said, both general and specific, I agree with and some I don't. On the specifics of this one dictator, I'm satisfied that his own people, and probably the world, is better off without him. You can disagree with me and we can move on.

That will teach me -- trying to make an effort to communicate!

One more comment I need to make and then I am really done (without repeating myself).

This one is about options available to the individual on hearing about events like Gaddafi's death.

1. We can react with glee, hate, feeling of superiority, blood-lust for more, self-satisfied righteousness.

2. We can react with sadness, sense of human tragedy, waste.

3. We can react with desire to find out what had happened, how it happened, why it happened, who benefited, who lost, what were the causes that contributed to all of it, from beginning to the end, are we (with our huge personal footprint on the Planet and our non-negotiable life-style) partially responsible for the chain of events leading to the birth, rise and death of a dictator?

Depending on which option you choose, you will have the following results:

1. You will have the feeling of superiority, in your safe, comfortable bubble that yet another evil monster was destroyed. You will have learnt nothing beyond learning about the suppression of another symptom.

2. You will get over it in time and, in time, maybe even become immune to feeling anything at all.

3. You may become a deeper, richer, wiser human being, understanding cause-and-effect relationships in the real world, maybe even come up with suggestions of how to cure the cause rather than suppress the symptom. If you do, maybe you can convince others about changes WE need to make in order to prevent effects on the other side of the globe. If enough of you will try to do that, it might even have an effect, leading to the world becoming a better place.

And now I really think I should stop trying to pour more fresh water into the fish tank!

(22-10-2011 09:38 AM)BnW Wrote: No need to respond. You have listed a number of general concerns, provide some specific examples, and some of what you said, both general and specific, I agree with and some I don't. On the specifics of this one dictator, I'm satisfied that his own people, and probably the world, is better off without him. You can disagree with me and we can move on.

That will teach me -- trying to make an effort to communicate!

One more comment I need to make and then I am really done (without repeating myself).

This one is about options available to the individual on hearing about events like Gaddafi's death.

1. We can react with glee, hate, feeling of superiority, blood-lust for more, self-satisfied righteousness.

2. We can react with sadness, sense of human tragedy, waste.

3. We can react with desire to find out what had happened, how it happened, why it happened, who benefited, who lost, what were the causes that contributed to all of it, from beginning to the end, are we (with our huge personal footprint on the Planet and our non-negotiable life-style) partially responsible for the chain of events leading to the birth, rise and death of a dictator?

Depending on which option you choose, you will have the following results:

1. You will have the feeling of superiority, in your safe, comfortable bubble that yet another evil monster was destroyed. You will have learnt nothing beyond learning about the suppression of another symptom.

2. You will get over it in time and, in time, maybe even become immune to feeling anything at all.

3. You may become a deeper, richer, wiser human being, understanding cause-and-effect relationships in the real world, maybe even come up with suggestions of how to cure the cause rather than suppress the symptom. If you do, maybe you can convince others about changes WE need to make in order to prevent effects on the other side of the globe. If enough of you will try to do that, it might even have an effect, leading to the world becoming a better place.

And now I really think I should stop trying to pour more fresh water into the fish tank!

I read and reread your options and I have to say, none of the above. Perhaps I am already immune or numbed. The sheer scope of all the implications of all the conflicts, ecological disasters, mistreatment and abuse of animals, the complete lack of action on the atrocities in [non-oil producing] Africa or other areas of little interest to the West, etc, etc has me practically stupefied when it comes to the "celebrations" surrounding Qaddafi's death. I almost feel as though something is actually wrong with me...or perhaps it is the bombardment of media, relentlessly telling me that I am supposed to be *insert emotion of the day here*.

(22-10-2011 04:36 PM)Saimmaq Wrote: I read and reread your options and I have to say, none of the above. Perhaps I am already immune or numbed. The sheer scope of all the implications of all the conflicts, ecological disasters, mistreatment and abuse of animals, the complete lack of action on the atrocities in [non-oil producing] Africa or other areas of little interest to the West, etc, etc has me practically stupefied when it comes to the "celebrations" surrounding Qaddafi's death. I almost feel as though something is actually wrong with me...or perhaps it is the bombardment of media, relentlessly telling me that I am supposed to be *insert emotion of the day here*.

I have received some personal communications from some of the members of this Forum, asking me if I see any hope.

Showed them to my wife and she said: “tell them to fall in love!”

Facetious answer, with a lot of truth in it.

Two issues here:

1. The state of the world, the human condition, our roles and responsibilities
2. Our personal lives and personal happiness.

In the first, we can do only what we can do and, if we do a little bit every day, we will have done the best we could.

For the second, we have responsibility for ourselves as well. We have this one life on this Planet, an incredible gift, not to be squandered, not to be wasted on banging our heads against brick walls. Every bit of happiness we grab will have made the world a better place, will have replaced sadness with joy, frustration with contentment.

My wife and I have a hobby: rescue stray cats who come, starving, frightened, desperate to our doors, asking for mercy, asking for a home to stay. We take them in, feed them, nurse them back to life, make them happy, purring creatures. It isn’t much, but it makes the world a minisculely better place: we will have replaced some suffering with some happiness.

That is the best you can hope for and, if you manage to keep your lips above the water, you will have found the only solution we can hope for: do what you can, locally, and hope for the best, globally.

I have to illustrate my point with a poem (religious references are symbolic only, as usual):
Happiness

god,
I don’t know what it all means,
and I do have plenty to be mad about:
blame you for the hate, suffering,…
…but today,
I am disarmed by the enormous gift
you bestowed on me last night
when, for an unexpected moment,
you made me glad
to be alive.

It wasn’t much,
just a simple statement:
‘but of course, I love you, Francis’;
just a look of pleasure, peace, contentment…
…she does mean everything to me
in this confused, sad world.

This love,
this certainty,
non-negotiable faith
and non-relative truth
saves me from drowning
in the tide of anger and pain,
of evil and stupidity…

…for a precious Sunday morning
out of place, out of time,
I can nurture this soft, gentle glow,
this absolute, this happiness,
and for that,
I do thank you,
god.

You can't do it alone, you need a soul mate to give you the strength you need to go on.

Well, I've already done the fall in love thing and I've gotta say, I already am ridiculously happy in my personal life. We rescue abused dogs (fostered and found homes for over 3 dozen in the past 5 years in three provinces) and my dream job would be to run a donkey rescue somewhere in rural Alberta; my current profession pays the bills. But I digress. It's not so much that I am unhappy, per se, I am just tired. I do have hope; finding fora like this certainly gives my hope a boost on one level yet, on another level, it really points out the gaps in my knowledge. I cannot debate philosophy with anyone - I found it a dreadful bore in university - and I am certainly no physical scientist. I don't seek to debunk everything I read/ see/ hear even though I distrust vast amounts of it. I am a historian, working in broad human themes, but even that is losing its lustre as I despair that enough people will ever come to some sensible conclusions about how we live our everyday, mundane lives and translate that into action on a community/ city/ "state" level. Maybe it's a sort of "battle fatigue" where I can see the problems I'd like to change, I do my best to change what I can, my immediate circle of friends are of a similar mind, but I still feel the "speck in the ocean" futility sometimes. That translates into a feeling of "meh" when I think of Qaddafi or Bin Laden or Hussein or Ceausescu etc. When I had less of a global view I could feel more acutely the impacts of individual events. Now that I see the world as a whole I find it harder. Not sure why that is, but there you have it!

I must say though I am really glad to have a place to just say this shite and not worry about someone coming back with the platitudes and "pray on it" crap! I am not expecting answers - I feel how I feel today, but I may feel differently tomorrow. Who can say? I just roll with it regardless!

I've not been on this thread for a few days so I'm playing catch up but I'll add my views anyway;

I don't know why people in the west who know nothing about Libya are celebrating, they have no reason to.
I think that in shooting a defenceless man in cold blood and dragging his body through the streets as entertainment for the masses without a trial the NTC have proved that they are hardly any better than Gaddafi.
I think that anyone who believes the NTC account that he was accidently caught in the crossfire of a fire fight needs their head examined (especially now his son has also been captured alive and then mysteriously wound up dead and riddled with bullets).
I think it unlikely that Libya will improve without Gaddafi. I will probably just be a different group of people being bastards.
I don't think the US can get very high and mighty about terrorism when they funded the IRA.
I don't know enough about Gaddafi to comment on whether he was the tyrant he was portrayed to be. My gut feeling is that he probably was a tyrant but not to the extent protrayed.
I don't care what anyone says, we didn't go into Libya to protect civilians or promote democracy, end of. I guarantee you all that it will be for more selfish reasons.
I don't blame Gaddafi for the 'bombing of civilians' earlier this year. What no-one ever mentions is that these 'civilians' had armed themselves, formed militia, and tried to forcibly remove him from power while making it blatantly clear that they wanted him dead. If I'd been in his position I would have bombed them too, as would most people.
I don't remember any world leaders being concerned by his human rights record before February. That shows that it either wasn't as bad as portrayed or they just didn't care before.
I think that he probably did deserve to be removed from power but we did it for the wrong reasons, that's what I object to.

Best and worst of Ferdinand .....BestFerdinand: We don't really say 'theist' in Alabama. Here, you're either a Christian, or you're from Afghanistan and we fucking hate you.WorstFerdinand: Everyone from British is so, like, fucking retarded.

(22-10-2011 05:35 PM)Saimmaq Wrote: I must say though I am really glad to have a place to just say this shite and not worry about someone coming back with the platitudes and "pray on it" crap! I am not expecting answers - I feel how I feel today, but I may feel differently tomorrow. Who can say? I just roll with it regardless!

Sorry for misinterpreting your previous post, Saimmaq, I see now that you have it under control. I am pleased that you feel at home here, lots of people who feel the same way about things and that helps -- I know it helps me.